The Progress of Man from Advanced Commentary to Sophomoric Opinion

March 14, 2007

I'm thinking about writing a novella about a Christian missionary from an American suburb who goes to Southeast Asia (maybe Africa) to spread the Gospel. I've been kicking the idea around for a while now, but writing about missionaries a couple of days ago brought it back to the fore.

The idea is that, although the guy never converts to any other religion or anything, he kinda gets an education in how the rest of the world works, and he comes to realize that his faith isn't what the world outside his subdivision is looking for. He has issues to deal with, once he comes to the realization that he's not the guy with all the answers.

February 26, 2007

I've read probably dozens of books that claim to have been written for beginners in Buddhism, but that end up invariably confusing. Generally, the authors of texts and treatises on Buddhism assume in the reader some prior knowledge or understanding.

Further, I've been asked to put together some notes for a basic class on Buddhism. This should be something for the guy who walks in off the street and says, "Buddhism? What is it? What are your basic beliefs?"

So have a quick read, and let me know what you think...

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Basic tenets

What is Buddhism? What do Buddhists believe?

Buddhists follow the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, a spiritual teacher who lived in northern India during the sixth century BCE (roughly the time of ancient Greece).

Buddhism teaches us to recognize that everything, including suffering, is impermanent, and that we can achieve enlightenment. But it also teaches us to conduct ourselves compassionately, and to avoid causing suffering for any sentient being. Although Buddhism is the oldest of the world’s major religions, it is the only one in whose name no war has ever been fought.

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What is a Buddha? Who are the big gold guys sitting in the front of the main hall?

A Buddha is an enlightened being. The word Buddha means “enlightened one” or “awakened one.” Of the many Buddhas who have existed over time, the three Buddha images in the main hall are the three most universally recognized: Amitabha Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, and the Medicine Buddha.

As Shakyamuni Buddha is the Buddha of our realm of the universe, when Buddhists refer to “the Buddha,” they generally mean Shakyamuni Buddha.

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What is a Bodhisattva?

The word bodhisattva means “great being.” A bodhisattva is someone who has achieved a degree of enlightenment, but is not yet a Buddha. Some bodhisattvas are said to be extraordinary beings who can manifest at will when needed, while others are ordinary people who’ve reached a level of enlightenment.

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Do Buddhists believe in God? In a god?

Yes and no. Buddhists believe that there are gods, but not one all-powerful being who controls the universe. The Buddha, for example, was not a god, and he is not generally worshipped as such.

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What is the importance of Buddha images, like the ones in the temple?

The Buddha taught that each of us has within him- or herself the ability to reach enlightenment, and he referred to this ability as our Buddha nature. As Buddhists generally don’t worship the Buddha as a god, the Buddha images don’t represent the image of a god. They are meant instead to represent the Buddha nature in each of us. In paying homage to the Buddha, we are in essence reminding ourselves of our own ability to transcend suffering, and to reduce suffering in others.

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What is the goal of a Buddhist? What does Nirvana mean?

To reach enlightenment is the ultimate goal of all Buddhists. One of the tenets of Buddhism is that life is full of suffering, which includes the nearly endless cycle of birth and rebirth, called samsara. Achieving enlightenment releases the Buddhist from suffering, and stops the samsara cycle.

It is this enlightenment that we call Nirvana. However, in the Mahayana tradition, Buddhists generally delay their own nirvana in order to help other sentient beings. Ksitigharba Bodhisattva, known as the bodhisattva of compassionate vows or the Great Vow Bodhisattva, swore to postpone his own enlightenment until all sentient beings were enlightened. As a result of Ksitigharba Bodhisattva’s great vow, this is seen as the ideal goal in Mahayana Buddhism: to save all sentient beings.

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To understand Buddhism, you should first understand some basic Buddhist history.

Who was the Buddha?

Who was the Buddha?

When the Buddha was young, his name was Siddhartha Gautama, and he was a prince. His father, Suddhodhana, was the king of the Shakya people. Their palace was in the town of Kapilavastu, the capital city of the province of Magadha in what is now Nepal (some Buddhist historians have placed the town in what is now northern India).

You will read and hear many different names for the Buddha, including Shakyamuni, meaning “Sage of the Shakyas”. Siddhartha was his given name, and his family name was Gautama, or Gotama.

Another name by which you will hear the Buddha called is Tathagata, which is derived from the Sanskrit term Tatha-ta, meaning Suchness, or one who has attained the full realization of suchness. This is generally accepted as the term by which the Buddha referred to himself.

The Buddha’s original followers addressed him as Bhagava (Blessed One).

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What are the Four Noble Sights, and why are they important?

In the palace, Siddhartha grew up with all the worldly luxuries the king could provide, and he was sheltered from the real world outside. Eventually, when Siddhartha was a young man, he persuaded his driver to take him on a tour outside the palace, so that he could see the world.

What the prince saw are today called the Four Noble Sights, and today what they represent is among the most basic Buddhist beliefs.

First, Siddhartha saw a sick man. This man was wracked with a debilitating disease, of the type that was undoubtedly common in his time. Because the prince had been so sheltered, he’d never seen anyone who was sick in his entire life. He asked if anyone could get sick, and was surprised to learn that anyone could.

The First Noble Sight is sickness.

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The second thing the prince saw was an old man, frail and barely able to move. Again, he’d never seen suffer from old age in this manner, so he asked his driver if everyone could get old. Again, he was surprised to learn that yes, anyone could get old.

The Second Noble Sight is old age.

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The third thing Siddhartha saw was a corpse – the body of a person who’d died recently, and was being prepared for the pyre (which was the custom of his people). Once again, the young prince was surprised to learn that everyone would eventually die, regardless of their station in life – it was inevitable of rich people, even royalty, just as it was of paupers.

The Third Noble Sight is death.

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Shaken though he must have been to learn all of these terrible things in one day, he continued with his journey – and it was then that he saw the monk. This was a young man of about Siddhartha’s age, who’d renounced worldly pleasures and had become a wandering ascetic – a monk, who looked perfectly at ease, even though Siddhartha wondered how anyone could be at ease given his newfound knowledge of suffering.

The Fourth Noble Sight is a way to transcend suffering.

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So, the Four Noble Sights are the suffering of sickness, the suffering of old age, the suffering of death, and the possibility of freeing oneself from suffering. These sights were Siddhartha’s first realization that suffering exists, and that there is a way out of suffering. This later became one of the most important tenets of Buddhism.

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Also contained within the Four Noble Sights is the concept of impermanence, in that all that lives must grow old, sicken and die, and is therefore not a permanent entity within itself. This is another important concept in Buddhism.

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What did the Buddha do in reaction to the Four Sights?

At first, Siddhartha returned to the palace, but before long, the things he’d seen outside the palace began to occupy all of his thoughts. If all that suffering was inevitable, was there still a way to rise above it? So, he left the palace and his family – even his wife and child – for the life of a wandering ascetic, and he vowed not to return until he’d found the way to enlightenment.

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How did the Buddha find enlightenment?

Siddhartha began his quest for enlightenment with a group of five wandering ascetics, who were also searching for enlightenment. Together with the five ascetics, he tried many different meditation and purification techniques, and met with a number of spiritual teachers. Finally, after six years, he realized the way to enlightenment while sitting in meditation under a tree.

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What did the Buddha do for the rest of his life?

Once the other ascetics saw the change in Siddhartha, they began to call him by the name Buddha, meaning Enlightened One, or Awakened One, and they became his first disciples, asking him to teach them the way that he’d found.

The Buddha’s disciples, called bikkhus (monks), grew in number until it became necessary to build a place to house them during the monsoon season. This was the first Buddhist retreat.

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The Dharma

What does it mean to take Refuge?

A Buddhist “takes refuge,” or declares faith, in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.

The Buddha, of course, is our original teacher, Siddhartha Gautama. The Dharma refers to the teachings of the Buddha – the way itself. And the Sangha refers to all Buddhists – the worldwide community of teachers, monastics (monks and nuns) and devotees.

In some Buddhist traditions, a “Refuge Ceremony” is held in which a person takes Refuge publicly, thus officially “converting” to Buddhism.

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What are the Five Precepts?

Within the original Sangha, the Buddha saw a need to establish rules governing the conduct of his bikkhus. Later, more precepts were added, but the original five are considered the requisite behavior of all who consider themselves Buddhists. They are:

Do not kill (or enable others to kill)

Do not steal (or be in possession of that which is not given)

Do not misuse sexuality

Do not lie

Do not use intoxicants

In some Buddhist traditions, the Five Precepts are considered the absolute basic foundation for monastic service, while in others, adherence to them this required for even lay Buddhists. But in no tradition are the Precepts considered a path to enlightenment unto themselves. They are merely a code of conduct taken as vows, when the Buddhist begins his or her serious study of the Dharma.

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What are the Sutras?

Upon realizing enlightenment, the Buddha began to teach the Dharma to whoever would listen, including very young children. In order to do this, he simplified many of his lessons into stories, parables and anecdotes. His followers would gather around him to hear him speak. Although none of his spoken lessens was written down until hundreds of years after his death, because written education was not the custom of his people, his teachings were handed down for the first three generations of Buddhists by word of mouth.

These spoken lessons were – and still are – called Sutras, and although they are all believed to have eventually been written down, not all have been translated from the original languages.

Although the Buddha taught the Sutras in a language that is now called Old Magadhi (a now-defunct dialect of some northern Indian peoples), by the time the Sutras were written down and preserved, the main body of the Sangha had moved to what is now Sri Lanka, and the Sutras were thus written in Sanskrit (which was on its way to becoming the unifying language of the Indian subcontinent) and Pali, a dialect of Sanskrit local to southern India.

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What are the Four Noble Truths?

When teaching the Sutras, the Buddha saw a need to simplify them into the most-easily-understood terms, and one of his most powerful teaching tools was the method of using lists. Examples of this abound in Buddhist canon: The Four Noble Sights, the Noble Eightfold Path, the Ten Directions, the Five Precepts, the Three Poisons – the list of lists would be virtually inexhaustible.

But in his first teaching, which he called the First Turning of the Dharma Wheel, the Buddha outlined what he called the Four Noble Truths. These are:

1.Suffering.

That suffering exists, and that all of life contains suffering. Even positive things contain suffering, because they are impermanent.

2.Causation of Suffering.

That suffering is caused specifically by desire – by longing, which is caused in turn by attachment to things that are empty and impermanent. Attachment to that which is only illusion in the first place, causes deep disappointment and suffering.

3.Cessation of Suffering

That by realizing the first two Noble Truths, namely the Truth of Suffering and the Truth of Causation of Suffering, we can begin to free ourselves of the otherwise endless cycle of suffering. This is the only way to end the misery to which the human condition is so prone.

4.The Noble Eightfold Path

That the way to use these Truths to end suffering is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path. This is, as its name implies, an eight-part list of specific steps to take in order to find one’s way to the Cessation of Suffering described in the Third Noble Truth. The eight steps are:

Right View

Right Thought

Right Speech

Right Action

Right Livelihood

Right Effort

Right Mindfulness

Right Concentration

While the Noble Eightfold Path can be seen as a list within a list, the Buddha continued to teach its importance until his own death, forty-five years later.

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What is karma?

Karma is a Sanskrit term for the concept that, because all things are interconnected, everything that happens affects all other things. According to the Buddhist view of Karma, everything that you and I do will eventually have an effect of all other things. Our positive actions will have positive effects, and vice-versa.

The Buddhist concepts of Dependent Origination and Causation hold that no single entity in the universe is endowed with its own independent self, and that nothing can either happen or exist without the existence of certain conditions. These conditions have, in turn, their own causes and conditions, and so on.

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The Different Schools of Buddhism: Widely Varying Traditions from a Single Teacher

As soon as the bikkhus gathered in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE to commit the Buddha’s teaching to writing, they began to disagree on what, exactly, the Buddha had taught – and in which language to write it. And when the Sutras, known today collectively as the canonical texts, or Tripitaka, had been written, they were copied and carried out of Sri Lanka, into the world at large.

The Dharma as it was written in Pali was carried eastward by a southern route, including by sea to the kingdoms that are today Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand. This form of the Dharma is today known as the Southern Transmission, or the Lesser Vehicle, or Theravada.

The version that was written in Sanskrit was carried north through India, west into modern Pakistan and Afghanistan, and east into China and eventually Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam. This came to be known as the Northern Transmission, or the Greater Vehicle, or Mahayana.